The first juvenile court was created in Chicago more than 100 years ago to protect the rights of children and to ensure their accountability and treatment. That court served as the foundation for the thousands of local juvenile courts that today serve the needs of millions of delinquent, status-offending, and dependent youth across America.

Since 1929, the primary source for data on the activities of U.S. juvenile courts has been the Juvenile Court Statistics series. The first Report described cases handled by 42 courts in 1927. This Report, the 71st in the series, describes cases from nearly 2,000 courts having jurisdiction over 71 percent of the Nation's juveniles in 1997.

The Report's analyses are derived from data contributed voluntarily by courts to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive. Juvenile Court Statistics 1997 relies on more than 917,000 automated case records and court-level statistics summarizing more than 217,000 additional cases to describe the number and range of juvenile court caseloads in 1997. Analyses of these data show that juvenile courts handled more than 1.7 million delinquency cases in 1997—a 48-percent increase from 1988. In 1997, juvenile courts petitioned and formally disposed an estimated 158,500 status offense cases—a 101-percent increase from 1988.

Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, Juvenile Court Statistics 1997 provides policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and the public with information on the nature of juvenile court caseloads today. With this knowledge, we are better able to build on the juvenile court's accomplishments to serve the Nation's youth.

John J. Wilson
Acting Administrator
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention